Get the latest tech news
Why valves are a spacecraft engineer’s worst nightmare
Follow the space industry long enough and you’ll notice that an outsized number of the problems that cause catastrophic failures of satellites or launch
Follow the space industry long enough and you’ll notice that an outsized number of the problems that cause catastrophic failures of satellites or launch vehicles can be traced to a physically small but ubiquitous part: valves. This reality came into sharp focus this week, when Astrobotic announced that its Peregrine lunar lander would not be able to attempt a soft landing on the moon due to a mission-ending propulsion leak — with likely origins in a valve that failed to reseal. So we’re not the high priority clients for these companies.” Teufert echoed these thoughts, saying, “As an industry, we are still so much at the point of being artisanal, handcrafted hardware, if it’s anything aerospace specific, and that definitely extends to valves.”
Or read this on TechCrunch
